Amid complaints on alleged slow disbursement of hospital claims during the COVID-19 pandemic, Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth) vice president for corporate affairs Shirley Domingo said almost 80 percent of claims were paid.

"For the total claims whether COVID or non-COVID, we have already paid 79 percent of the total of claims that was given to us. So that is already paid, that is around 231 (billion) pesos," she said at the virtual ''Laging Handa'' public briefing on Saturday.

"So the total amount that was submitted to us is around 259 billion pesos so around 80 percent, 79.6 percent as of now were already paid. Now as to the rest we continue to process the claims and the turnaround time for the good claims is around 43 days," she added.

Domingo said under the Debit Credit Payment Method (DCPM) the PhilHealth has released around 6.3 billion pesos to more or less 206 health care institutions.

"We implement DCPM or Debit Credit Payment Method, what we do there is when the IATF identified the high risk areas, where there are surge in Covid 19 cases, we look into the 60 percent of inprocess good claims and we release it immediately to the hospitals," she said.

"The hospital just needs to sign a memorandum of understanding, letter of understanding and signify their intention to avail, so when they submit these then we will release the funds," she added. Robina Asido/DMS